YouTube Video TRANSCRIPT: Daily Taoist 49
Man! This is a great book! That’s what I like about– Oftentimes I’m writing books, I’m writing for myself. And then I just make them so they’ll work for other people. A lot of these books like this one– This one was written 100% for me in the beginning. Then whe I formed my Kung Fu school I said, “Well, let’s change this over for my students.” And then about ten years ago I thought, “Well, maybe let’s see if I can change it over for the world.” And so, yeah. So you’re getting a kind of presentation of it. And then I’m gonna go in and record the audio book. So I recommend you go get the audio book. It’ll be recorded nicer, and you can listen to it. It o there wa pwon’t be so distracting. And hopefully I won’t ramble so much. [laughs] I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
Alright. Let’s see. Okay, and by the way: the last question– I hurried off on the last video. Was, Do you enjoy reading how-to books? This is a how-to book: How-to put yourself together.
And by the way, I think I mentioned there was a pausing in on one of the videos. Maybe it was the last one and it kind of shut down. I think– did I do it? I think I did. You go into your SETTINGS and you put it on AIRPLANE MODE. Okay? So now you won’t get phone calls and stuff that actually shut down my recording program. But the program sends NOTICES. So I’ve told most of my programs, “DON’T SEND ME NOTICES.” My bank apps and all these different apps. I turned all the notices off on almost every single one. With a couple exceptions, including my phone which tells me when there’s something on my calendars or something. So the only way I can shut that down is tell them, “I’m asleep.” I still have to go into NIGHT MODE. So that’s AIRPLANE MODE plus NIGHT MODE and I think I can shoot without interruption. And I think that’s why it jammed up: I was getting a couple of notices. From the SETTINGS of my phone.
Okay. So here we go. #28 of the DAO TE CHING, or my version of it. The TAO OF TAOISM by me, Buddha Zhen. And this is THE DAILY TAOIST coming to you. And if this HAPPENS I’d love to be The Daily Taoist man. It’d be good for me. I’m enjoying this– maybe more than you are. [LAUGHS] It’s something that I would enjoy doing for ME. Let alone for you. Because I can’t really afford to be doing things for other people that aren’t of any benefit to what I’ve got to do now. I’ve got to focus my life. Remember? We’ve been talking about that in previous lessons. And that’s what I’m doing. I’m deciding who I am. What I am. What I’ve got to do. What’s important to me. And, kind of putting my life back in a new focus. In a new path.
# 28:
Life’s lessons are learned
by aggressive awareness that watches patiently.
Wow. How much of that’s me? And how much of that’s Lao Tzu? I don’t know right off hand. [LAUGHS] That’s a great line. It sounds like ME a lot. But remember this is Lao Tzu and my interpretation. So I definitely flavored this.
But here we go.
Life’s lessons are learned
by aggressive awareness that watches patiently.
There’s a bunch of noise going on out there. Sorry about that. Sounds like the trash can.
Wholesome values create pathways to goals
as rewards unfold naturally
according to the virtues of the person
who also realizes that the path rewards
are not the goals.
WOW! This is great stuff! This is great stuff. We should all review this on a monthly basis. Read this book every month.
Life’s lessons are learned by aggressive awareness that watches patiently.
Say, that’s very good. And most people don’t pay attention. I mean, tell me the colors of the houses down your street when you walk to the bus stop or whatever. What are the colors? Pay attention! But in order to really pay attention that means you’ve gotta aggressively pay attention. Okay? Look at that. “Hey, I didn’t even know that house had a white porch,” you know. And then there’s a grey house, you know… You’ll start to notice.
It takes awareness. It takes an effort. Cows, no matter if they’re all looking at the same thing… They ain’t seein’ nothin’. [LAUGHS] Their–their heads just pointed that way. So that’s how most people are. Their head’s just pointed a certain direction. They don’t see nothin.’ THEY DON’T SEE NOTHIN’. What am I? Talking very educated.
Now. Let me read it one more time and we’ll continue.
Wholesome values create pathways to goals.–
(I like that. There’s always a path to the goal but let’s do it with wholesome values.)
–As rewards unfold naturally–
(In other words, you’re gonna get some rewards as you’re headed towards your goal.)
–according to the virtues of the person–
(Okay, so your values now are going to determine the rewards that are going to happen along your path. Like Trump’s rewards are scorn and scandal. And he’s gonna be– I mean, to be honest with you he’s gonna try to pardon himself. But he needs to go to court and go to jail for all of the stuff he’s done as Presideent. I’m serious. He should go to jail. Yeah. We’ve gotta. We’ve gotta let people know in the future that they can’t just hijack our government and get away with it. He needs to go to jail. But anyway, those are his rewards that should unfold naturally.)
–according to the virtues of the person–
(His virtues are very very illegal.)
–who also realizes that the path rewards are not the goals. —
(And he realizes that these– Well actually, that’s one of the reasons he’s so screwed up. He thinks that all these rewards that he’s getting: these payolas and everything… He thinks these are his goals. That’s why he’s gonna pay the price for that. His goal should’ve just been: to be a good President. Do the best for our country and all this. But no. He’s just picking all the fruit off the tree. And it’s like, “We want you to help us run this farm.” And he says, “Oh sure!” And then he goes in and slaughters all the animals… and eats all the stuff… He’s just making a mess of the whole place. He’s not taking care of it. He’s not making it better than when he got there. He’s just pillaging. So that’s our President: pillaging our country. Pillaging our democracy.)
Okay. Here we go. What time is it? Five minutes? Okay. I’ve got a fifteen minute limit to get this on IGTV.
How much effort do you put into learning something new every day? [LAUGHS]
Every day! What do you put into learning something new? It’s so frustrating.
I’ve got a friend I’m trying to get to work with — I don’t want to say names, but a fellow producer. I’m just trying to get him to work on one of movie projects. “I don’t have time. I can’t even put in an hour a week.” You know, he’s just– So anyway, he doesn’t learn anything new every day. I’ve known him for quite a few years, I couldn’t tell you what he’s learned. I couldn’t tell you what he’s learned in the last few years. Nothing as far as I can tell.
But anyway–
Describe your patience.
Describe your impatience.
How much does it bother you when people are late?
How much does it bother you when people are late?
Are you good at ‘killing time’ — when you have to wait?
Are you good at killing time when you have to wait?
How do you do it? So what are the ways you do kill time if you have to? See what… anyway–
Do you squeeze Kung Fu– (Remember I told you I wrote this for my students.) –Do you squeeze Kung Fu practice in when unexpected gaps appear in your day?
When I was in Salt Lake City I was going to mix down, well I did. I paid a mastering engineer. I had to get it mastered so I could make a CD. And then I didn’t have enough money to make CDs. It was two or three years later I ended up getting a CD made. Sheesh. Being poor sucks!
Being poor has always hindered the production of my life and my ability to even help my family.
But as far as my stepfather was concerned: That’s okay. He didn’t care how much my family or me suffers or that I’m homeless. He’s just my FATHER.
I’ve got to go to a different planet. This planet sucks! Sorry I said that. This is a horrible planet to live on. [LAUGHS] Unless you want to be a cow. If you like working it’s a great planet. It’s a slave planet. If you want to just work and get paid–this is where you go. The planet to come and have a job.
Alright. Where were we?
Um, How much does it bother you– Oh, anyway. When I was waiting, the guy was almost an hour late. But when I was waiting for him I was doing all my Kung Fu practice. It was a morning thing. So he was supposed to be there like 9:30 or 10:00… He got there at like 11:30. I forget but he was an hour, almost an hour late. And I don’t even care what his excuse was. But the point is that while I was waiting I was doing all my Kung Fu workouts. So by the time he got there, I’d done them all. I’d done my Tantuis, some stretching and all that stuff so I was like, “Yeah. I got my daily workout routine totally done.” And I went in there and mastered in the studio.
So in a way, his being late–If he would’ve been on time, I wouldn’t have done that. I wouldn’t have got that workout in before the session. But having got the workout in I was in I was even– in my prime.
So you can make the day better by taking advantage of other people’s mistakes. Work with the Tao. Don’t fight against it.
Anyway. But anyway, there’s lots of advice I could give you. But it’s not gonna do any good if you don’t have that Nature. We’ve got to build in your Nature. Otherwise my advice isn’t going to fit into your Nature.
So let’s just figure out who you are. Don’t worry about what I’m telling you is good advice. Just figure out who you are and then you can figure how to take the advice that you like, and make yourself a person who can actually utilize that advice. Okay?
So, do you squeeze Kung Fu practice in when unexpected gaps appear in your day?
Summarize your values.
That’s all it says. They’re very vague questions to me but anyway:
Summarize your values.
We all have a value system. “Yeah. I go to work and I get paid. And I expect my wife to be there and kids to be clean…” You’ve got a value system. Or I expect to be treated well at work. And have a safe place. I need a parking spot. What are your values?
Who influenced your values and how did they devleop?
So if you’re back to the worker thing and you want to work, you want to have a place for your car and stuff… Are you imitating the role model of your dad or your mom? It’s one of those types of relationships and scenarios that your trying to fit into it. And feel omfortable… taking over that cog in the wheel.
Remember, I’m not making value judgments. I mean, you can probably tell that I don’t ascribe to some of these things…
Here we go. Fast. These are not– My value is to make you happy. Don’t try to be an artist like me. And I shouldn’t try to be a worker like you. See? We’ve just gotta play in our– We’ve got to find our Tao. Our Natures.
How many of your values were developed by you as opposed to the ones your parents may have taught you?
And remember that later– like fifteen years later, 20 years later I wrote the ACT ZEN book. Act Zen to Be Zen. And that’s based a lot on this book, and Buddhism, and a lot on my UCLA script writing classes. I learned about character development. So I put all that together: that’s ACT ZEN. Great book. Great book. Another one of those books you’d like to read at least once a year.
How many of your values are your parents and your religion’s teachings?
So look at– Where are your values coming from? Okay. So you said a minute ago that you have values: “I will not lie. I will not cheat. I will not steal. I will not kill.” Not everybody makes that value. Hopefully you do. Put that value down on–If you can write down, “I do not– I will not kill.” Really. I’d like to see you write that down.
Let’s see. So how many of your values are from your parents? And how many are from your religion?
Kind of separate them out and know where you’re coming from. And then you can say, “Oh what about all these other values I’ve got?”
Well, where’d those come from?
Kind of put yourself together. That ‘s what ACT ZEN does. It figures out where you learned everything. And where everything you do came from.
As an actor you need to know all your motivations. We’re not going into the spiritual thing. I didn’t even mention the spiritual thing back then. I’m just looking at your psychology of how you react and act. Which is mostly programmed, environmental.
But as we of course have always noticed whenever we do character program. A lot of people seem to be born in with certain traits. And now my SOUL THEORY explains them.
Here we go.
Despite all your values, how do you determine right from wrong?
You’ve got all these values working for you , but what do you really– How do you choose right from wrong?
“Well, it’s whether I like it or not.” “Smells good or it doesn’t smell good.”
What is it? How do you determine it?
What’s my time. Twelve minutes. Okay.
Explain the– It says, Oh–
List your virtues.
How are you a virtuous person? How are you a role model? How are you better than average?
How are you virtuous? How are you better than the average person?
Got any virtues? Hope so.
Explain the significance of money to you.
Okay? How significant? My relatives all call it, “My money.” “That’s my money.” “I don’t want the government taking it.” “Less government is less money…” They’ve got all these weird perspectives. Their money. Their money. They’ve all been bankrupt with their money. They’ve taken their money and they’ve all been bankrupt. All my relatives, they’ve all gone through at least one bankruptcy. I think every single one of them. They’re all Republican. It’s a normal thing I think.
Gotta hurry up. Thirteen minutes.
Explain the significance of money to you.
Like I said, my parents they get theirs. My mom said she’s gonna die with it. Remember I told you, my step father died and won’t give any. My mom says they’re taking it to the grave. They don’t think it’s right to even give it to me when they’re dead. I have no idea what he did with all his money. He’s a millionaire. Well he probably gave everything to her. But it, yeah. So I guess she’s got everything. So she’s a double millionaire.
But anyway, she said when she dies I’m not gonna get any. My parents! Like I said, I’ve got to find a better planet. I’ve gotta find a planet with good parents on it.
What rewards have come to you recently?
And be thankful. We’ve gotta be thankful. Because I actually did get a few rewards from my parents. Even my horrible realtives. They actually bailed me out a couple of times. One of my cousins without– I told him I’d make it a donation to Tai Chi Youth, but it was really to me. He gave me a thousand bucks. And without that I couldn’t have been able to rent the truck and everything to escape. I would’ve been stuck in Vegas even longer. So I give thanks to my cousin for that. One of my brothers gave me his old car when he replaced it. So I do get little things. And I do remember every one of these little things… I appreciate them. But overall… you know…
I’ve gotta hurry real fast.
What rewards have come to you recently?
What rewards are near?
What rewards do you have coming up here?
What goals were completed recently of yours?
And what goals are near?
Real fast.
So remember these rewards and goals may tie together and that’s what we’re kind of looking for.
I’ve gotta hurry and end this here.
But look at your goals and then look at the rewards you’re getting and try to figure out the relation and put your virtues–look at the whole thing and see if Lao Tzu is right.
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